by Nick Kyme
A cyclopean creature unfolded from the false flesh, much taller, much thinner. The obesity of the vizier had been cleverly crafted to hide something inhuman, a necron cryptek, a skeleton of living metal. He looked old, shawled in a patina of rust, his gilded finery having long since lost its lustre.
‘The sleepers must wake…’ he rasped in a cold, metallic voice.
‘He already has,’ snarled Sicarius, and rammed the Tempest Blade deep into the necron’s mechanised innards. Then he pulled the sword upwards, tearing through cables and mechanisms until he had ripped it through the cryptek’s shoulder.
Nehebkau fell back in a heap of sparking, fluid-spitting machine parts, not quite able to comprehend what had happened to him. He dropped his staff and the amulet, releasing Daceus and Vorolanus, who sagged gratefully to their haunches.
‘I only want…’ said Nehebkau, ‘to save my people.’
Sicarius looked down on the necron without mercy. ‘So do I,’ he said, splitting Nehebkau’s head in half.
Exchanging a weary look with his brothers, he nodded.
‘It is done,’ he said, looking up at the roar of engines and the ships descending through Agun’s pale sky.
IN THE DEPTHS
Haephestus had found a crack that led into the earth, wide enough for him to pass through. He did not venture into the dark beneath Agun alone; he had a squad of Primaris Marines with him, who panned the shadows warily with their stab-lamps.
The tomb was here. Much smaller, at least by the accounts he had read, than the one on Damnos, but its presence had meant the Ultramarines could not yet leave the planet. They had to be sure.
It had taken almost two weeks to arrange an expedition, the rest of the time having been spent on installing the atomic core in the ship’s enginarium. Mercy of the Omnissiah, it had restored the vessel to something resembling operational capacity. It also meant the Techmarine was wearing fully powered war-plate and not the lumpen and inert suit he had been forced to endure previously. It made the delve into the tomb easier. He still limped, his left knee shattered and crushed in the wreckage of the gunship. A makeshift brace served for now and allowed slow but steady perambulation, but it would require a bionic replacement. That would have to wait.
‘Brother-captain…’ declared one of the Primaris Marines.
Sicarius eased his way towards him, Daceus at his heel.
The Primaris Marine stepped to one side, gesturing to a large angular doorway with his bolt rifle. ‘I think we have found it.’
The rest of the subterranean caverns were mainly earth and the occasional dusty, obsidian node emblazoned with an alien glyph. Way markers, Haephestus assumed.
Sicarius turned to the Techmarine. ‘Confirmation?’
He read the glyph structure around the edge of the portal and looked through to the vaulted chamber beyond. It went deep, widening the lower it got. He saw cradles, or more like open caskets. Humanoid forms hung from them, limp and apparently inert.
‘More light…’ said Haephestus.
A bank of phosphor lamps engaged with a heavy shunk of a thrown lever and the vault lit up pellucidly.
The necrons were here but they were rusted and broken down by the rigours of age or some metallic contagion; it was impossible to determine. The upper cradles carried nondescript skeletal warriors, stained by corrosion, partly eaten through. Some were missing limbs, others the entire lower halves of their bodies, perhaps piled up like a lair of bones in the nadir of the vault far, far below. A scarab creature scuttled languidly out of the shadows. Many of the others had fallen from their perches and languished on their backs, legs twitching or some not moving at all like arachnids in their death throes. Daceus impaled the creature on his sword to end its aimless wanderings.
Haephestus led them farther into a chamber recently occupied.
‘The cryptek’s quarters,’ he said, noting the dead scarabs and arcane paraphernalia. ‘Touch none of it,’ he warned, though the majority of Nehebkau’s trappings appeared to be non-functional or discombobulated. Several severed necron skulls stood on a rack. Suffering from the same decomposition as the others, the heads were made distinctive by synthetic flesh draped across their morbid features.
‘I’ve seen necrons try to disguise themselves in human skin before,’ said Daceus, ‘but nothing like this. Those were mad, depraved creatures. Whereas this…’
‘Is calculated,’ uttered Sicarius, ‘and iterative. Nehebkau wore an effective mask.’ He looked out of the chamber at the ranks of caskets spreading out below. ‘How many do you think are in here, Haephestus?’
‘At least a thousand. The royal court will occupy the deepest part of the tomb.’
‘Find out how deep it goes. Take every servitor we have left aboard the Emperor’s Will if you need them. Search every alcove. Every inch. I want you to be sure.’
‘Of course, captain. Sure of what?’
‘That they’re dead. And when that’s done… bury it. The Mechanicus can do what they like with it once we’re back to the crusade.’
Satisfied, Sicarius left and took Daceus with him.
Haephestus regarded the tomb. He was going to need all of those servitors.
Scipio knelt in silent meditation. Praxor’s old sword lay in front of him. He resolved that he would need to stop thinking of it in that way. He was armoured, and privately revelled in the strength afforded by his restored war-plate.
Another warrior came to kneel beside him, bowing his head as he mouthed his silent oaths just as Scipio did. His arm had been fixed. Scipio heard the dulcet whirring of the servos as the warrior adjusted his position, and smelled the freshly applied oil.
They had lived, and would go on. Another battlefield beckoned as it always did.
His observances complete, he opened his eyes and uttered two simple words.
‘For Praxor.’
‘For Praxor,’ Iulus echoed him.
It had been several weeks, edging into months, and Reda knew the Ultramarines would be eager to return to the crusade. She had not yet gone back to the ship. Instead, she hiked through the wilds of Agun, a few miles from Farrodum. The city was still visible to the east, swathed in mist, as was the way on this world. It was already changing. Materials had been brought from the Emperor’s Will, what little could be spared but enough perhaps to restart the colony as was originally intended. The people had begun to revert back to what and who they had been before. It was a frontier settlement though, surviving and not thriving. It might be decades before the Imperium ever returned, if it ever did at all.
Perhaps that would not be so terrible. Agun was a wild land, but untamed and fresh with possibility. It had dangers. The orks, though all but decimated, would likely return, and much of the landscape remained uncharted. She tried not to think about what might lie below the earth, but had heard the explosions sealing the tomb. The Ultramarines would not leave if they weren’t sure. At least that’s what she told herself.
Vanko walked ahead of her, the sun on his skin and the harsh wind rasping around his body. He kept his cloak tight but embraced the elements, turning his face skywards as a light rain began to fall. He seemed better, if still a little distant. There were nightmares. She had them too, but Reda dared to hope the worst of that was behind them.
‘Vanko,’ she called to him, just as he had crested a rugged tor.
He turned back and smiled, beckoning her.
‘Not so terrible,’ Reda said to herself and went to join him.
Sicarius faced the sun, the last of the gunships waiting behind him. His armour had been restored. Even his cloak fluttered proudly in the wind, restitched by the Chapter artisans.
Above in the upper atmosphere, the Emperor’s Will waited too. It had waited long enough.
‘To perish unremarked, to die an ordinary death. To be forgotten,’ said Vedaeh, standing by his side. They were alone on the near-empty landing field and just outside the city gates. ‘They were your words.’
‘I re
member them,’ said Sicarius.
‘Your greatest fear, if one such as you can really feel fear.’
‘We can feel it, just differently to you.’
‘It’s not my fear,’ Vedaeh told him. ‘It’s my wish. I have lived an extraordinary life, Cato. I have fought alongside gods, after all.’
‘We are not gods.’
‘Try telling that to the people in that city when your flying ships came out of the sky on tongues of fire several months ago.’
‘They have adapted well. The colony is restored.’ He turned to her and his stern face, the one she often found so unreadable but at times possessed of surprising empathy, softened. ‘You want to stay and be a part of it.’
‘I do, if you will allow it.’
Sicarius looked off into the distance and then his eyes went skywards to the heavens, to the unseen void of stars that called to him.
‘You are not bound to me or the Emperor’s Will, not any more. There are many ways to serve the Imperium, Vedaeh.’
‘Yes, Cato, there are.’
‘And the others, the armsmen of your retinue, you wish for them to stay too?’
‘They have expressed a desire to. I would be glad of their company.’
Sicarius gave a signal. It was so barely perceptible that Vedaeh almost missed it. The gunship’s engines started to engage. Their growing backwash bent the stalks of long grass forwards and kicked up grit and dirt in the process.
‘You have honoured me, Vedaeh,’ he said, as he started to walk to the gunship’s open ramp.
She wept freely now, unashamed, humbled.
‘It has been the greatest part of my life serving you, my lord.’
‘Serve them now. They will need it. The Imperium will come. We may yet meet again.’
‘I doubt it, my lord.’
‘No,’ Sicarius uttered sadly. ‘You’re probably right.’
Vedaeh watched him go the rest of the way and climb aboard the ship. He stood upon the ramp, facing her as it took off, and did not go inside until the vessel was almost out of sight.
‘Of Captain Sicarius, I will say only this – none have borne battle more nobly or with greater prowess. I will mourn my brother when I know he is lost. Until then, I will hold out hope that he may some day return to us. If any can do such a thing, it will be him. And when he does return, then think of the tales he will have to tell us.’
– Marneus Calgar, upon hearing of the
disappearance of the Emperor’s Will
The warrior hurried through the cloisters of the ship, heedless of the serfs who scurried from his path, his armoured footfalls beating a rapid staccato against the metal deck. Giving a crisp salute to the sentry, the gilded gates to his lord’s chambers parted and he entered swiftly.
One of the Victrix Guard stepped into his path, brandishing an ornate sword, a finely wrought shield with the crest of Ultramar emblazoned upon it thrust in front of him. The eyes behind the retinal lenses of the guard’s gold-winged helmet were unwavering.
‘Let him through…’ uttered a deep, gritty voice.
The Victrix Guard lowered sword and shield at once, and stepped aside.
‘Captain Agemman,’ said Marneus Calgar, leaning forwards on his throne, his great gauntlets clutching the arms with barely repressed strength. The Chapter Master of the Ultramarines radiated dominance and power. He was resplendent in his artificer armour and one of the greatest warriors and commanders of Ultramar. One did not intrude upon his chambers lightly.
‘I assume you have urgent news,’ he said.
‘I do, my lord,’ Agemman replied, the Regent of Ultramar and a vaunted hero in his own right. He bowed on one knee, showing the proper deference before rising and standing straight as a mast.
‘It must be a matter of some import if you are here bringing it to me yourself.’
Agemman removed his helm. His hair and face were plastered with sweat and his many scars deepened in the chamber’s brazier light but he was, nonetheless, ebullient.
Calgar’s eyes narrowed, as his patience thinned. ‘Out with it, then. What brings you here to disturb my meditations?’
Agemman smiled proudly, his chest filling with purpose and belief.
‘He has returned,’ he told Calgar.
Calgar’s eyes widened and he shook his head in joyful disbelief. He laughed loudly and the sound carried throughout the room.
‘I never met an Ultramarine harder to kill than him. Thank Guilliman. Sicarius has returned.’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nick Kyme is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Old Earth, Deathfire, Vulkan Lives and Sons of the Forge, the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, and the audio dramas Red-Marked, Censure and Nightfane. His novella Feat of Iron was a New York Times bestseller in the Horus Heresy collection, The Primarchs. Nick is well known for his popular Salamanders novels, including Rebirth, the Sicarius novels Damnos and Knights of Macragge, and numerous short stories. He has also written fiction set in the world of Warhammer, most notably the Warhammer Chronicles novel The Great Betrayal and the Age of Sigmar story ‘Borne by the Storm’, included in the novel War Storm. More recently he has scripted the Age of Sigmar audio drama The Imprecations of Daemons. He lives and works in Nottingham.
An extract from Blood Of Iax.
KASTOR
The Fulminata had come to Shebat Alpha, and none could stand before them.
Kastor, Chaplain of the Dioskuri, roared. It was an expression of pure rage, fuelled by piety and stoked by righteous hatred. The noise, amplified by his vox-vocaliser, made the bellows and grunts of the greenskins surrounding him sound pitiable by comparison.
Salve Imperator shattered an ork’s skull. It then snapped the neck of a second, hurling the beast back into its kindred. Energy crackled around the skull-topped crozius arcanum, blackened blood evaporating from it with every searing strike of the power mace. Bones cracked and flesh was pulverised. The towering Primaris Chaplain was a whirlwind of furious judgement, his leather cassock and vestments snapping around him, his pitch-black power armour splattered with a patina of alien viscera.
He had moved too far ahead. He was cut off. The realisation made him smile.
An ork attempted to headbutt him. It rammed itself impotently against the stylised ribcage that encased his breastplate. Kastor snatched the beast by the throat with his free hand, hauling it from its feet so that its piggy eyes were level with the deep ruby lenses of his skull helm. The beast bellowed at him, spittle spraying from its maw, but the Chaplain silenced it with a headbutt of his own, bone cracking and tusks snapping as he caved in the alien’s face.
He dropped the ork, his armour registering the strikes of crude cleavers and fists from all sides. None penetrated. He spun in a tight arc, vestment scrolls whipping around him, and cleared a semicircle of space with a single swing of Salve Imperator.
‘See how easily the alien falls before the weaponry of the righteous,’ the Chaplain boomed. ‘Praise the Emperor for giving us this chance to enact His will!’
His slaughterous euphoria was interrupted by the familiar, battering thunder of bolter fire. Blood and sinew burst around him as a hail of mass-reactive bolts shredded the mob attacking him, their remains splattering his armour. Already the runtier greenskins at the rear of the melee had turned tail and were fleeing back up the street, perhaps unwilling to engage something that could bellow louder than one of their warbosses. Kastor let them go, the battle fury draining abruptly from his genhanced body.
‘Too far again, Salve,’ said Captain Demeter. The commander of the Fulminata was clad in his Gravis plate, the proud heraldry of the Ultramarines befouled by blood and grime. Behind him was Intercessor Squad Nerva and Ancient Mars Skyrus, who bore the lightning standard of Fulminata. Its blue-and-white silk rippled in the smoke shrouding the embattled street, the weak sunlight glinting from the wings of the golden bolt-and-aquila that tipped its crosspiece.
‘The xenos exist to be purged,’ Kastor
responded. ‘And I exist to perform that purging.’
The deafening report of a battle cannon interrupted Demeter before he could respond, the shell shrieking over the heads of the Primaris. It detonated further up the street in a great storm of broken masonry and ork remains. Kastor turned to survey the Imperial forces behind the Ultramarines – a squadron of Voitekan Leman Russ battle tanks grinding forwards in single file, supported by a platoon of Astra Militarum infantry from the same world. They paused, crouched on the pavement as they stared up in undisguised awe at the Primaris who had broken the ork mob. Kastor raised Salve Imperator, the crozius still wreathed with lightning.
‘See how the beasts run, soldiers of the Throne,’ he said, his voice booming over the growl of engines and rattle of nearby gunfire. ‘This is our city, the Emperor’s city, and we will reclaim it one step at a time. Press on. Crush these alien remains beneath your boots and the treads of your mighty tanks. The Emperor protects!’
The advance continued.
‘Watch the manufactorum colonnades to the right,’ Demeter ordered over the vox, highlighting a series of towering industrial pillars on the shared tactical display. The huge rockcrete structures had once been testimony to Shebat’s productivity but now lay cast down in rubble and ruin, a metaphor for the city’s fall. It had been great once – the foremost manufactorum of Ikara IX’s Adamantium Belt, a refinery for the vast deposits of ore mined in the Tombstones, the mountain range within whose barren flanks the city nestled. Four millennia of industry had created a sprawling hive of smokestacks and smelter-scrapes, surrounded by a thicket of prefabricated habitation blocks and a further sprawl of slums and shack dwellings.
Then the green menace had come to the Ikara System, and Shebat’s productivity had ended.
Kastor blink-acknowledged Demeter’s directive via the visor display and drew his Absolver bolt pistol. Its heavy-calibre rounds made a mockery of even the tough hides and thick bones of the orks, each detonating shell bursting apart chests and skulls in gouts of blood and pulverised organs. He forced himself to check his pace so he didn’t begin to outdistance his battle-brothers once more.